Oral Answers to Questions

Hilary Benn: The simple reason why we are likely to have to apply for derogation under the new directive that gives member states the ability to apply for additional time is the existing problem that we have with PM10 and nitrogen dioxide, which, by definition is nothing to do with any decision that may yet be taken about the expansion of Heathrow. That is a problem we have now. Therefore, the answer that I gave in May was completely accurate.

Hilary Benn: One thing that the Government have done working with energy supply companies, following the Prime Minister's announcement in September about action on insulation and help with bills, is to provide more information with bills on ways in which people can save energy. Providing practical advice, places where people can go and assistance is exactly what is required to deal with the environmental challenges that we face.

Huw Irranca-Davies: That is another important point, which shows the concern in all parties to ensure that we have such access. One reassuring point is that, in the parts of the UK where take-up of broadband has been large, rural areas have outstripped other areas in the past 10 months: take-up there has increased to 59 per cent., compared with 57 per cent. as a whole. However, my hon. Friend makes a valid point—we need to keep an eye on the research and the statistics for the way in which broadband is rolling out, and ensure that we fill the gaps as time goes by. It is vital to my hon. Friend's constituents and others.

Theresa May: I thank the Leader of the House for giving us the forthcoming business. Today the Home Secretary is making a written statement, understood to be about the cost of the identity card scheme. She is also making a speech today announcing that the Government have backtracked on plans to issue identity cards to workers at all UK airports; it has been heavily trailed in the press. Why has the Home Secretary not come to the House to make an oral statement on the status of the ID card scheme?
	Will the Leader of the House give us a date for the pre-Budget report, or at least a date when she will give us a date for that report? Given the current economic climate, and the state of public finances, it will be a very important statement. Given that we have not had a debate on the economy in Government time, will she take up the suggestion made by my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) that we should have one or two days' debate on the pre-Budget report?
	On Monday the House of Lords had a debate on the economy. During that debate, my noble Friend Lord Forsyth called for an inquiry on the leaking of information about the banks' bail-out package. The noble Lord Lea of Crondall suggested a wider public inquiry, including the banks. The City Minister, Lord Myners, said—I quote from Lords  Hansard, column 16—"My Lords, I agree". But yesterday, the Prime Minister said, in  Hansard , column 247, that the City Minister "said no such thing". Will the Leader of the House ensure that the Prime Minister's statement in the official record is corrected, and when will we have that public inquiry?
	Shortly, the Bank of England is expected to cut interest rates, but today it is reported that Northern Rock, the nationalised bank owned by the taxpayer, will instead raise some of its mortgage rates. Businesses and home owners are already struggling, as banks are not passing on interest rate cuts, so may we have a statement from the Chancellor on why a state-run bank is blatantly defying the Government?
	Yesterday Labour MEPs voted to abolish the UK's opt-out on the European working time directive. At a time when businesses across the country are struggling to keep going and families will probably be looking for more work, not less, that just goes to show how out of touch Labour MEPs are. It is time that the Prime Minister got a grip on his party. May we have a statement setting out the official Government position on the working time directive?
	In the House of Lords this week, Lord Darzi said that patients have a right to three cycle treatments of IVF. However, guidance from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence only recommends that patients have three full cycles of treatment; it is not mandatory. May we have a statement from the Health Secretary to clarify official Government policy on IVF treatment?
	Finally, there has been widespread condemnation of the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Mr. Davies) for his remarks blaming a commander in the Special Air Service for his choice of vehicle prior to the deaths of three troops in Afghanistan. The fact is that there was no choice. The Minister, when in the House on Monday, refused to apologise to that commander, so will the right hon. and learned Lady assure the House that she will press the Minister to give an unreserved apology to Major Morley and to UK commanders in Afghanistan?

Harriet Harman: The right hon. Lady raised the question of ID cards and argued that there should be an oral statement, but she is aware, as she said, that there has been a written ministerial statement, which simply updates the House about our progress. As we have previously announced to the House, ID cards with biometrics are being introduced for foreign nationals and piloted at airports, so that people who are airside have biometric ID cards. The written ministerial statement simply announced the progress that we are making with the pilot scheme as we roll it out.
	On the date for the pre-Budget report, we have chosen a number of opportunities for the House to debate the important issue of the economy. We have had debates about energy and employment and a statement about small business, in addition to numerous statements from the Chancellor of the Exchequer. As for the date of the pre-Budget report, we will announce it, as I said last week, in the normal way. I suspect that Donald Rumsfeld would have called it a "known unknown" as far as this week is concerned, and I am not announcing the date this week.
	The right hon. Lady asked for a public inquiry into the global financial crisis, but may I take this opportunity to commend the work of the Select Committee on the Treasury—I should have thought that she would take that opportunity too. The Treasury Committee has asked the public to suggest questions for its evidence-gathering sessions, and the Committee is bringing before it not only the Governor of the Bank of England and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but, no doubt, those various people who used to be described as the masters of the universe. I pay tribute to the Committee's work and look forward to receiving its report.
	On Northern Rock, the right hon. Lady rightly said that there will be an interest rate announcement from the Bank of England shortly, and, subsequent to that, other banks and building societies will make it clear how they intend to respond to it. She will know that Northern Rock is managed at arm's length, as we would rightfully expect it to be, but the business Minister will make it clear to chief executives of building societies and banks in a meeting this afternoon that the Government have put in a considerable amount of public money directly, with £37 billion of capitalisation for banks, and made available through guarantees a further £250 billion, and that we expect from them some response to ensure that the interest rate cut is passed on not only to mortgage holders but to small businesses. I am sure that that is the view of the whole House, and the Minister will make it very clear.
	The right hon. Lady asked about the European working time directive, and we have always been clear that it is right to give employees legal protections at work. The Opposition have not been in favour of such protections, whether the minimum wage or the working time directive, but we are in favour of people not being forced to work long hours that they do not want to work, or that can impede health and safety. That is why, when we came into government after many years of Tory rule, we introduced a legal prohibition on requiring people to work very long hours. Following a European Court judgment there have been some changes, to which other Governments across the piece are now agreeing, about how on-call time is calculated for the purposes of the working time directive. [ Interruption.] I must say that I would be interested to hear whether the Opposition, who are chuntering away about working time, are now in favour of guaranteeing minimum standards and the protection of working hours. Our position is clear, and we are getting on with things.
	I will look into the right hon. Lady's point about Lord Darzi's comments in the House of Lords about IVF provision and write to her.
	As for our troops in Afghanistan, I should say that Remembrance day offers us all the opportunity to remember not only those who lost their lives in the great wars, but those who have lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. We will continue to increase investment in equipment for our troops and to work with the other countries around the world who share the important work that our troops are carrying out in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Simon Hughes: I have regularly raised with the Leader of the House the question of time for the consideration of Back-Bench and Opposition new clauses and amendments. She has announced three items of business for the next couple of weeks that will certainly have amendments from both sides of the House.
	In the Employment Bill debate two days ago there was, yet again, no opportunity to complete consideration of the Opposition and Back-Bench new clauses and amendments—indeed, more than half of them were not debated. Yesterday was our 20th sitting day since the House came back following the summer. On nine of those days, there have been no votes at all, and the House has risen early on nearly a third of them. Will the Leader of the House honour her undertaking to me and others that she will review the business of the House to make sure that there is time for Back-Bench and Opposition new clauses and amendments when the Government come forward with their business; otherwise Parliament will not be doing its job properly, and she will not be honouring the obligation to make sure that we hold the Executive to account?
	In the light of the very welcome election result in the United States yesterday, may we have the opportunity of a debate on relations between this country and the USA, before the end of this term and before the Prime Minister meets the President-elect, as we hope he will before long? There have been tense issues between our two countries and many hope that the new regime will mean a much better relationship; I am sure that that view is widely felt in the House and the country. It would be helpful and much appreciated if the House had the opportunity to discuss matters that could lead to a huge improvement in relations between us and the United States.
	Yesterday, the OECD produced a report on energy prices across the European Union. It said that gas and electricity bills had increased more than twice as quickly in our country as they had in France and Germany and that in Europe only Norway had suffered higher energy price inflation. It said that prices here had increased by nearly 30 per cent. in the past year. The Leader of the House knows that energy prices are the major driver of fuel poverty. May we have a statement from the new Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change about what he will do to ensure that our energy price rises are kept roughly in line with those of the rest of the continent and why our energy price increases are hugely higher than those in our competitor countries across the channel?
	We are about to have a debate on the Congo, which is very welcome. However, figures revealed in an answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Paul Holmes) show that since 2003 more than 5,000 Congolese asylum applications and more than 7,000 Zimbabwean asylum applications have been turned down. May we have a debate on whether we are honouring our international obligations to ensure that people who cannot go home because of the dreadful political climate in their country are given the right to stay here for the period for which they need safety? I understood that we had all signed up to that arrangement.
	There are increasingly common rumours around the House that the Government have made a decision that the Post Office card account will be given to PayPoint, not to the Post Office. I am choosing my words very carefully: can the Leader of the House give us an absolute, unqualified assurance that the statement on this matter will be made first in this House by the Secretary of State, and that no announcement will be made outside the House tomorrow or over the weekend, so that if the decision has been made, we can have the chance to deal with it here? If it has not been made by Monday, my party has chosen the subject for an Opposition Supply day debate on that day. If the rumours are right, we look forward to testing a very dangerous Government decision.

Barry Sheerman: Will my right hon. and learned Friend consider an early debate on Lloyds TSB's proposed takeover of Halifax Bank of Scotland? That bank employs many thousand of people in Yorkshire, most of them in west Yorkshire in the area that my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Mrs. Riordan) and I represent. We know that good things are happening, and we do not want HBOS to fail, but there is a feeling among parliamentarians in Yorkshire that we are not being kept in the loop. We need assurances that the many thousands of jobs in Yorkshire will be maintained under the new structure when it emerges.

Andrew MacKay: Following the bovine remarks of the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Mr. Davies) and his woefully incomplete apology in Defence questions on Monday, will the Leader of the House let us know on which day next week he will return to the House to apologise from the Dispatch Box for the slur that he cast on commanders in Afghanistan and Iraq, especially Major Morley?

Harriet Harman: All our defence Ministers are strongly committed to supporting our armed services—I am sure that that applies to all hon. Members—and ensuring that they have the right equipment as they do their important and dangerous work. There has been record investment in equipment for the armed services.

John Battle: Some International Development Committee members recently visited Goma, and I would like to put a point to the Minister. It seems to me that every time we hit a crisis, we respond in a box. It is now a human conflict crisis, but it has also been a development crisis and, in the past, a political crisis. Can we join those together? I am delighted to see the Under-Secretary of State for International Development, my hon. Friend the Member for Bury, South (Mr. Lewis) in his place on the Front Bench. When we talk about action from the international community, however, can we integrate efforts to tackle conflict, the politics and development at the same time, because if we do not, we will simply return to these situations time and again?

Bill Rammell: We are certainly keeping the situation under review, listening to advice on the ground and seeking to do everything that we possibly can to ensure that the numbers are appropriate and they are deployed in the most effective way. Given that it is the biggest peacekeeping force anywhere in the world, I think that the numbers are in place, but they need to be in the right places. That is what we need to push to address.
	There have been calls from some quarters for the EU to provide troops to help guarantee supply and support, and I have addressed that issue in answer to questions. The International Criminal Court opened its investigation into events in the country in June 2004. With the exception of Nkunda's partner, Bosco Ntaganda, all the Congolese individuals subject to arrest warrants issued by the ICC are in the court's custody. The DRC has co-operated in the process to bring them to justice and we expect it to continue to fulfil its obligations to the court. The broader task ahead is to develop a culture of accountability and tackle the impunity that has had such a detrimental effect on life in the country. That extends to economic issues, which echoes the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West (John Battle). The UK is working to promote transparency in the mineral sector, and to create conditions in which the DRC's natural wealth can be better managed and used for the benefit of the population.

Edward Davey: The whole House is indebted to the hon. Member for Falkirk (Mr. Joyce), not just for sharing his knowledge with us today but for the work that he does on the all-party parliamentary group. I share many of his concerns, and I hope that the Minister will take particular note of his comments. He, like the Minister, is right to say that ultimately, we need a political solution. It is a shared position on both sides of the House that, frankly, we do not believe that the British armed forces have the capacity—at least in the immediate future—to contribute in large number to any extra troops that go to eastern Congo.
	I agree with the hon. Gentleman that MONUC needs some reinforcement. In our view, it was impossible for it to do the job asked of it prior to the current crisis—let alone in the light of the current crisis around Goma—without reinforcements. I think that he and I agree that the Government need to go a little further on this. It is not credible to argue that the objectives of defending Goma, maintaining the immediate ceasefire—such as it is—and disarming the Hutu militia in the medium term can be met without MONUC's being reinforced. I do not accept that we can deal with this just by redeploying the existing MONUC forces.
	The Minister keeps saying that this is the largest UN deployment across the world, but Congo is the size of western Europe. He may say that most of the problem is in the Kivu region, but as the hon. Member for Falkirk reminded us, MONUC is having to deploy in a whole range of different areas in Congo—in the Ituru and in north DRC. So MONUC is really stretched, and I do not accept the Government's position that this can be dealt with simply by redeployment; there needs to be extra capacity. That is what Alan Doss believes and what the UN's own peacekeeper office has argued for.
	The possibility of an EU force has been discussed in this House and elsewhere, and like the hon. Member for Falkirk, I am concerned that it is the British Government who have talking that possibility down. It has been suggested that President Sarkozy and others in the EU have been keen to see this force, but it is the Brits who have been talking it off the table. I hope that that is not so, and that the Minister who replies will answer that point. What has the British Government been doing about the EU proposal, and why are they not championing that idea to ensure that our European partners provide some troops in this crisis when they are needed?

Edward Davey: I think that it would have to work with the UN force. Ideally, I would like MONUC to be reinforced and to have an EU force. An EU force of 1,500 troops has been mentioned; however, in 2003, under Operation Artemis, an EU force was very successful, having been deployed for only two months, in bringing to an end a vicious conflict. The quality and standard of EU forces is therefore significantly higher than the MONUC forces, and a short intervention could be very useful in backing up what MONUC has been trying to do.
	However, it is not simply a question of the number of troops, but of their mandate, as the hon. Member for Mid-Norfolk (Mr. Simpson) discussed. There is some concern that MONUC's mandate is a little too restrictive, in the sense that it has to work with the Congolese army. One can understand the politics of why that is so, but as has been said, the Congolese army has proved ineffective and in some cases has actually undermined some of the work taking place. Its troops have been committing human rights abuses. The need for the mandate to be clarified, so that MONUC can operate independently of the Congolese army, is increasingly important.
	The peace process is obviously critical, and I pay tribute to the Foreign Secretary for the work that he has done there. My concern regarding President Kabila is whether the international community is giving sufficient support to the necessary rebuilding of the Congolese army, and whether we are trying to persuade him to talk to General Nkunda. That might seem counter-intuitive to many in this House and elsewhere, but unless Nkunda is brought into the process, peace will not come as quickly as it needs to. The Minister talked in his opening remarks about involving Nkunda, but not in terms of direct talks with the Congolese Government, which is what Nkunda is seeking. Perhaps the Minister who responds to the debate can say whether we are trying to bring that about.
	Finally, I want to revert to the points that I made during the urgent question asked earlier this week about the importance of the economic dimension. When I challenged the Minister about this last Tuesday, he talked about the importance of the extractive industry's transparency initiative, which is of course very important. But the truth is that very few British or western companies have been brought to book for the way in which they are, directly or indirectly, fuelling this conflict. It is good that DAS Air and Afrimex were found to be in breach of OECD guidelines this summer, but what actually happened to them? Very little happened to them. Companies from the US, Canada, Germany and Austria are not being brought to book. It is time that the illegal mineral trade, which is fuelling this conflict, was clamped down on and that some of these electronic consumer goods firms, which benefit from the minerals sourced from this region, were held to account. They need to be asked to explain their sourcing policies and procedures. I am sure that our constituents would think it wrong if their buying electronic consumer goods—mobile phones, computers and so on—helped to fuel the death and destruction of people in eastern Congo. They would not expect to be doing that, and I want the Minister to tell us what this Government are doing to prevent such a situation from occurring.

Jeremy Corbyn: I wish to put on record my thanks to the Leader of the House for choosing this subject for a topical debate—it is very important that we have this debate. Obviously, I have to keep within the 10-minute time limit, so I shall be as quick as I can.
	The history of the Congo is one of the mad grab of its mineral-rich resources by generations of, mainly European, traders and mining companies, stretching right back to the 19th century, when it was King Leopold's personal fiefdom, through to the period when it was the Belgian Congo. Independence subsequently came, and with it the assassination of the then Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba. After that came a series of dictatorships, and the rape of the Congo continued, with the theft of resources and the destruction of so many people's lives.
	Many such people have made their homes in this country having sought exile from those conflicts. I echo the point made by the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) about the need to have some regard, understanding and respect for the position that Congolese asylum seekers face in this country. We should not be sending back to the Congo people who will, unfortunately, face enormous danger when they return. I hope that the Minister will be able to say something about that.
	A couple of days ago, a meeting of the Congolese diaspora was held upstairs in one of the Committee Rooms, and yesterday, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom held an interesting meeting in Committee Room 10 on the "Voices of African Women". The women involved had suffered because of what is going on in the Congo at the present time. Like my hon. Friends the Members for Falkirk (Mr. Joyce) and for Amber Valley (Judy Mallaber), I was in Goma earlier this year and I was an election observer two years ago. During that election, there was a sense of hope and a feeling that the huge international investment that had been put into the electoral process would bring about some degree of political stability, the building of state institutions and some degree of long-term peace. Unfortunately, that has simply not happened in the case of the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.
	The combination of the poverty of people in a mineral-rich area, the rape of women as a weapon of war by the various militia groups and, I am sorry to say, by the Congolese army, and the fear with which many people live is desperate to see. Indeed, the refugee camp that the three of us visited in April was overrun and burnt down only last week. The people we met there, 90 per cent. of whom were women trying to eke out an existence, have now fled to goodness knows where. They lack any food, clean water and medical supplies, and everything else, and are in a desperate situation.
	I want to draw two factors to the House's attention, the first of which is the role played by minerals and the second of which is the politics of the region. The DRC is a very mineral-rich place: it has massive forestry reserves, and one hopes that the majority of those will be permanently protected; and it has almost every mineral that the world needs. At the moment, the world needs coltan, tin, copper, gold, diamonds and all kinds of minerals, and the DRC is rich in those. It is cursed with the riches of its minerals; the benefits of all those riches have not gone to the poorest people in that country—indeed, there should not be any poor people in the DRC. I do not blame people for buying mobile phones—everybody in this House has a mobile phone; the whole world is buying mobile phones. Coltan is an essential part of their manufacture, but we need to deal with some issues: the methods that are used to extract the coltan; the system that is used to export it; and the money made by mining companies, metal dealers and others, none of which reaches the poorest people in the region. I have received many witness statements of what is going on in the DRC at the present time.
	The issues of mineral extraction and the extractive industries transparency agreement are very important—that agreement has simply not been followed by the Congolese Government. Indeed, there is evidence to suggest that elements of the Congolese army are controlling individual mines, as are other militia forces. The funding of the arms purchases—the funding of what goes on—comes directly from the extraction of minerals. Thus, in addition to the political work being done to try to bring about a settlement, tough questions need to be asked of every one of the big mining companies that end up processing some of the minerals that are extracted from the DRC, because, wittingly or unwittingly, those companies are fuelling the killing of millions of people. I use my words advisedly, because 5 million people have died in the DRC in the past 10 years as a result of this conflict, hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced and the capital city, Kinshasa, is overrun by refugees from the war in the east of the country.
	My second point concerns the relationship with Rwanda. That country went through the horrors of genocide, and nobody can ever understate or underestimate its effects and horrors. Those of us who have been to Rwanda, seen the museum of the genocide and talked to people who went through it can only throw our hands up in horror at the things that happened to the people there. That is not to say that the Rwandan Government should not behave in a responsible way within the region.
	I am holding a copy of the 2004 memorandum of understanding on the development partnership between the Government of the UK and the Government of the Republic of Rwanda. Article 11, to which the Rwandan Government signed up, states that they will
	"remain committed to playing a full part in international and regional initiatives to prevent and reduce intra and inter-country conflicts and establish peace in central Africa".
	The Rwandan Government are receiving a huge amount of British aid; probably 40 to 50 per cent. of all Rwandan public expenditure comes from British taxpayers in one form or another. Therefore, the Rwandan Government need to be very open about the relationship between Rwanda and Nkunda and his forces within the region, and about the porous border that exists between both countries, which results not only in arms going through, but in large amounts of illicitly mined minerals getting out the DRC.
	In addition, a joint communiqué was agreed between the DRC and the Republic of Rwanda, clause 10 of which states:
	"The Government of the Republic of Rwanda commits to:
	(a) Take all necessary measures to seal its border to prevent the entry into or exit from its territory of members of any armed group, renegade militia leaders, Nkunda's group in particular, and prevent any form of support—military, material or human—being provided to any armed group in the DRC."
	It goes on to say that information should be shared with the DRC and United Nations mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
	Hon. Members have rightly raised the question of what happens to the MONUC forces at the present time. I have met many of the people, from different parts, who work within them. One such group came from Uruguay, but people from India and many other countries are working within those forces. We witnessed them working extremely well during a humanitarian crisis when a plane crashed at Goma airport. I am not in favour of sending another military force in under a separate command or separate relationship, because that is a recipe for chaos, rivalry and, probably, disaster. If MONUC requires more logistical support or more people on the ground to enforce peace, it should clearly get that support and the necessary aid that it requires. Rather than playing at being armchair generals at a distance, I ask the House to think of two things. People are now starving in the eastern DRC. Children are dying for lack of medicines. It is a humanitarian crisis; and we have a responsibility to provide all the aid, support and help that we can.
	A military solution in DRC is not possible; the solution must be political. I am pleased that Lord Malloch-Brown is attending the conference taking place in Nairobi this weekend to try to promote a political dialogue between DRC and Rwanda and to encourage political developments in eastern Congo. So far, politics have failed and business has made a great deal of money while ordinary people have been dying. We must provide support, bring about a ceasefire and peace and, above all, promote a political settlement so that independence for Congo can become a reality, and people can live in a safe and secure environment and benefit from the natural riches of their own land.

Tony Baldry: No hon. Member would dissent from the assertion of the hon. Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn), the Minister and others that Congo needs a political solution. Neither would anyone dissent from the assertion that it is difficult for us to describe the scale of the individual tragedy—of families, women and children, many of whom have been forced to move many times, each time losing more of their possessions and becoming more destitute, thereby making their lives much more difficult. We all hope that a political solution can be found.
	I shall focus the House's attention on the issue that I raised during the urgent question earlier this week. During the 1990s and the early part of the new millennium, the international community became increasingly enthusiastic about promulgating the concept of the responsibility to protect. We had seen the horrors of the Rwandan genocide and we had seen Kosovo, where the United Nations had failed to act—Kosovo was dealt with by a coalition of the willing. As we entered the new millennium, there was a desire that we should never find ourselves in such a position again. That was described well by Tony Blair, the then Prime Minister, at the 2001 Labour party conference, when he said that if Rwanda happened again we would not walk away as the outside world had done many times before. He insisted that the international community had a "moral duty" to provide military and humanitarian assistance to Africa whenever it was needed.
	In the same year, Kofi Annan, then Secretary-General of the UN, said in his Nobel lecture:
	"The sovereignty of states must no longer be used as a shield for gross violations of human rights."
	That led, in 2005, to the UN adopting a long resolution containing provisions on the "Responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity". It makes it clear that:
	"The international community, through the United Nations, also has the responsibility to use appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means, in accordance with Chapters VI and VIII of the Charter of the United Nations, to help protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity."
	In January, the current Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, made himself clear:
	"I am fully committed to keeping the momentum that you the leaders have made at the 2005 World Summit and will spare no effort to operationalise the responsibility to protect."
	In reality, however, the international community no longer appears able to deliver on the responsibility to protect.
	I shall focus on four countries: Sierra Leone, Sudan, Congo and Zimbabwe. In Sierra Leone, the international community intervened very effectively. Led by UK troops, it took on the west side boys and restored peace to Freetown, and thus to Sierra Leone. That was followed by a very successful UN international war crimes tribunal, which for the first time established that enlisting child soldiers is a war crime and that a Head of State has no sovereign immunity from charges of war crimes. Charles Taylor is now in The Hague being tried for war crimes in Sierra Leone. That intervention was fantastically successful. However, that was partly because Sierra Leone is comparatively small and because the UK had the lift capacity and ability to enforce its military will.
	By the time we got to Darfur, however, countries with a sizeable lift capacity—in particular, the United Kingdom and the United States—were engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan, and there just were not the countries with the kind of military lift capacity needed to enter Darfur. So we had a kind of dance where, first, the African Union said that it would take a lead. It was clear to those of us on the International Development Committee who went to Darfur that the AU was doing the best it could with scant resources, but that it was totally incapable of doing anything other than monitor the situation. Then it was decided to have a hybrid institution of AU and UN troops, but that has not managed to do much more because, again, there are no players with the kind of lift capacity and military co-ordination able to enforce their will in Darfur.
	That has come through in this debate. The hon. Member for Falkirk (Mr. Joyce) rationally said that if rebel forces really wanted to penetrate into Goma, we would require a large number of troops on the ground to prevent it from happening. Anyone with any military experience realises that. However, we must also acknowledge that the Secretary-General is not able to call upon the necessary forces. To those of us who took part in the Westminster Hall debate on Afghanistan the other day, it was quite clear that much of NATO's commitment for the foreseeable future will be tied up in Afghanistan. Indeed, if anything, before enjoining the European Union to get more involved in other areas, we should enjoin EU and NATO colleagues to participate more in the UN peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan.
	The UN and the international community need to give serious consideration to how the Secretary-General can access the sort of military capacity needed on such occasions to ensure that the words "responsibility to protect" are not empty or meaningless again. That will the require countries outside the EU to make a much greater contribution. After all, a number of members, even in the Security Council, make no significant contribution to peacekeeping or peace-enforcing anywhere in the world. The responsibility to protect cannot be supported only by a coalition of the willing—it is far too important. If we say that there is a responsibility to protect, and if we give the impression that the international community will come to the rescue of those suffering terribly from humanitarian and war crimes, but we do not deliver, we will be betraying those people.
	In Congo and elsewhere, we must ensure that the international community and the Secretary-General have the capacity to deliver on the responsibility to protect. We all hope and pray that a political solution will be found to Congo's immediate problems. However, with the major military world players, such as the UK and the US—with all their lift capacity—occupied in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, the resources available to the Secretary-General are pretty thin. We have to face up to that, and to the reality that we will need competent and co-ordinated military feet on the ground to protect civilian populations. At the moment, we are not delivering even in Darfur, so we may well be misleading ourselves if we pretend that we can deliver in other areas.
	I hope that Ministers will reflect, with colleagues in the UN Security Council and General Assembly, on how we can deliver on the promise that is the responsibility to protect.

Ivan Lewis: I think that all Members would agree that today's debate is welcome and timely. Sadly, the circumstances that have led to this debate are not. The fighting in the past few weeks has once again brought the world's attention to one of the most intractable conflicts in Africa, and highlighted the human cost. What happens in the Democratic Republic of the Congo matters not only because its 60 million people deserve peace and a better future, but because that vast country with nine neighbours is vital to the stability of the whole of central Africa. The DRC is one of the frontiers of development, where the battle to achieve the millennium development goals will be won or lost. At least 75 per cent. of the DRC's population lives in extreme poverty by the $1-a-day standard. Fewer than half of the DRC's children finish primary school. As many as 1.6 million people are displaced from their homes, more than 900,000 of them in north Kivu alone.
	That is not what the people of the country want. The successful elections in 2006 were a clear demonstration of the people's desire for peace, and of their expectations for change. That pressure is, in itself, important. The situation in the past few weeks and months in the Kivus are a betrayal of what the people of that country truly desire. We have played a leading role in the international political and humanitarian response. Even before the crisis, the UK provided £30 million to the humanitarian pooled fund for priority responses by non-governmental organisations and UN agencies, plus £7 million to the Red Cross and other NGOs.
	We have moved quickly to increase our response. We have provided an additional £5 million, which the Secretary of State for International Development announced only last week. Some of these funds have already been used to support UNICEF, whose stocks are low. Two aid flights from the UK have arrived in Entebbe today, carrying plastic sheeting, 18,000 blankets, 24,000 buckets and 1 million water purification tablets. We are arranging for those essential items to be transported as quickly as possible to Goma. I would like to put it on record that we need to look at the situation at Goma airport, which is a long-standing concern. It is also important to say that today we approved £2 million for the World Food Programme to meet immediate food needs.
	I do not have very much time to respond to the sensible points that have been made, but let me quickly say, on MONUC, that there is to be an urgent review by the UN, and there will be a report to the Security Council very soon on the request for additional forces. At this stage, no EU country has made any request for an EU force to be sent—there was a discussion about that on Monday—so perhaps there has been some misunderstanding in this debate.
	I echo the points made by hon. Members about a political solution: in the end, there has to be such a solution. At the conference tomorrow, it is extremely important that there be appropriate, responsible and urgent engagement by both the Congolese and Rwandan Governments on fulfilling their responsibilities in that respect. My noble Friend Lord Malloch-Brown will be there, and will play an active role in the discussions. I am sure that Members on both sides of the House will welcome the proactive contribution that our Foreign Secretary has made. He went with the French Foreign Minister to the affected area as a matter of urgency, to see what we could do.
	I share hon. Members' concerns about the exploitation of mineral resources. We need to do more on that issue, and I shall certainly look at what more we can do.
	On the question of violence against women, it is important to note that this year the American Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice led a debate about UN Security Council resolution 1820 on women, peace and security, in which she focused on the responsibility to protect—a point made by the hon. Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry).
	The message from this House is that there is complete unity. We want the Governments in the region to fulfil their responsibilities and we want an immediate cessation of violence so that we can get the humanitarian aid to where it needs to go and begin a longer-term process of peace and stability in the area.

Vernon Coaker: I beg to move,
	That this House has considered the matter of public engagement in fighting crime.
	I am pleased to have the opportunity to open this debate on such an important subject. Over the past 10 years we have seen real progress in tackling crime—the British crime survey shows that overall crime is down 48 per cent. since 1995, and our streets are safer as a result—but crime is still a major concern for the public. The public are essential to tackling crime, as is confidence in the police and other criminal justice agencies. Louise Casey was commissioned by the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary and others to carry out a review of the public's experience of crime and how we can support them in the fight against it. The review findings show that 67 per cent. of people would not know who to complain to if they were not happy with the way their local area was being policed. They also show that the public want more say on policing their neighbourhoods, and that 68 per cent. of people agree that someone in their local community should hold the police to account.
	We listened to the public, who told us that they want a criminal justice system that meets the needs of victims. They also want to know about what happens to those who have committed a crime—in the review, 90 per cent. of people we asked said that they thought that they were not told enough about what happens to the perpetrators of crime when they are convicted. Notwithstanding the excellent progress that the police and other partners have made, we cannot ignore what the public tell us: bold leadership and action are needed. We are on the side of the public, but the findings show that the public want us to go even further.
	In July, we published the policing Green Paper, "From the Neighbourhood to the National: Policing Our Communities Together", which will put in place radical reforms to transform the relationship between the Government, the police and the public to provide a more consistent, visible and accessible service that is responsive, meets public needs and expectations, deals with local priorities and keeps people informed. A key commitment in the Green Paper was the policing pledge, which for the first time will give the public a clear minimum standard of service to which they are entitled. The pledge will deliver what the public want from the police, and, for the first time, the public will know the minimum standard of service that they will receive. The public will be told how they can contact the police, what response to expect, and how they will be kept informed if they become victims of crime. It commits to high-visibility neighbourhood policing teams and monthly public meetings, so that neighbourhoods can hold the police to account.

Vernon Coaker: We are trying to ensure that all of our systems are effective and simple. We keep the matter of the Criminal Records Bureau under review, and we will act as necessary when it is appropriate to do so.
	Investment in the youth of the UK is an investment in our future—something with which I know we all agree. We are allocating money to help to prevent young people becoming involved in crime and antisocial behaviour. We will tackle youth crime through early intervention—a point just made by the hon. Gentleman—non-negotiable support and tough enforcement. This summer, that commitment was proved by the publication of the youth crime action plan and the youth alcohol action plan. We are trying to reach young people by using new technologies. The youth knife crime campaign recently allowed us to include an "It Doesn't Have To Happen" page on Bebo, the social networking site which is the hub of the campaign. To date, it has 6,143 friends, and has received more than 66,000 visits and 1,320 wall posts. It also uses two viral adverts showing the physical and emotional consequences of carrying a knife. We developed those campaigns in co-operation with young people.
	We talk about the involvement of the public in tackling crime, and the involvement of young people is an important part of that. The Government need to reflect—as all of us do, sometimes—on the fact that young people have asked us not to communicate with them in the way that we have always communicated with the public. We need to think about the new ways of communicating, such as the internet, and the use of radio stations, TV advertising and digital communication. Those methods will get to young people in a way that more traditional ways of communicating do not. That is what we tried to do through the campaign that I mentioned.

James Brokenshire: I welcome this debate and the acknowledgement contained within it that, despite all the Government's initiatives, all their legislative hyperactivity and all their rhetoric, the very people who are an essential part in the fight against crime—the public—have been left out of the loop.
	In his nine points of policing, Sir Robert Peel, the founder of the modern police service, said:
	"Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence."
	Those words are as relevant now as they were then. We all have a responsibility to reduce crime, by seeking to abide by the law, reporting crime, supporting the police and taking action where appropriate.
	The relationship that Peel outlined—the relationship between the public and the arms of the state intended to protect them—is based on mutual trust and confidence. Yet those bonds are being increasingly tested and strained by a Government intent on intervening when that is not needed, getting in the way of the relationship between the public and the police. The perverse reality now is that people are actively discouraged from intervening to stop crime taking place. People fear that getting involved might result in getting a record. The policy approach of increasing encroachment by the state, through ID cards, increased surveillance and DNA, mobile and e-mail databases, trusts us all so much that it treats us all as potential suspects.
	That breakdown in the relationship has been highlighted by the Government's own advisers. Louise Casey was right when she said that the majority of people do not think that crime has fallen, that people
	"do not believe the official statistics on crime"
	and that
	"the public see the Criminal Justice System as a distant, sealed-off entity, unaccountable and unanswerable to them or to Government."
	That is a pretty devastating critique of 11 years of this Government's failed attempts to engage the public in the fight against crime.
	It is telling that confidence in the police is down from 72 per cent. in 2003 to 57 per cent. in 2008, but should we be surprised when the Government have reduced the discretion of the police and their ability simply to get on with the job? The police cannot be on the public's side if the Government are not on their side. The micro-management of police officers by the long arm of central Government is the biggest drain on police time, officer morale and public confidence.
	Police officers do not sign up to spend more of their time on paperwork than out on patrol. They do not sign up to spend half a day processing a single arrest and they certainly do not sign up to be
	"a slave to doctrine and straitjacketed by process,"
	in Sir Ronnie Flanagan's words. That is leaving aside the Government's culture of centrally driven targets, in which performance indicators on bringing crimes to justice have skewed police priorities on volume crime, antagonising the public and preventing officers from using their discretion to deal with local needs and priorities. We are talking about a regime that proved so successful that chief constables started abandoning it because it was meaningless.
	On top of that, we have a performance regime of mind-boggling complexity and dubious effectiveness, in the Home Office's police performance assessment framework, which requires the police to carry out 23 baseline assessments and to record and report on 32 statutory performance indicators. That regime led one police force to undergo 15 different inspections in one year. As Louise Casey rightly notes:
	"the public do not want their local police service to be chasing centrally driven targets, preparing for and responding to assessments and worrying about monitoring at the expense of time and resources that could better be devoted to local issues and to the quality of service."
	Against that backdrop, one can begin to understand why the former head of the Police Federation and the Government's new police bureaucracy tsar, Jan Berry, has commented:
	"We have lost the morality of successful policing."
	To be fair to the Minister, I welcome the Government's acknowledgements of those fundamental mistakes, as embodied in the policing Green Paper. The problem is that their proposals for change simply do not go far enough. If they are really serious about giving greater control back to the police, why will they not scrap statutory charging and give the police the ability to charge suspects for all summary and most triable either-way offences? If they really want to reduce the stifling burden of paperwork, why will they not add to the list the paperwork relating to stop and search? That would allow officers to radio in the details and free up more than 1 million police hours each year. And if the Government really believe that their new public service agreement targets are not about central direction, as the Minister has claimed, why do they make it explicit that police services should not bother with shoplifting, despite the direct relationship between acquisitive crime and drug-taking?
	The Government are now seeking to dress up the much vaunted police pledge as a new way to support community working. Putting aside the fact that the pledge is full of re-announcements and existing police practice, it is interesting to note that neighbourhood police teams will
	"spend at least 80 per cent. of their time visibly working in your neighbourhood, tackling your priorities."
	However, the point of neighbourhood teams was that their scope was supposed to be ring-fenced—they were supposed to be retained within their designated areas, and to be protected from abstraction to other areas, in order to strengthen engagement with the public. Yet this supposed pledge of better local service seems to be delivering the reverse. Will the Minister tell us whether giving a green light to community police officers to spend one fifth of their time outside the communities that they are supposed to be ring-fenced within, and which they are supposed to be protecting, represents a watering down of the commitment to neighbourhood policing?
	To promote greater public trust, confidence and engagement, the public need to be assured that the information being given to them is reliable. Despite all the Government's continued assertions that the crime rate has gone down, the problem is that no one believes them. That point was accepted even by that arch-Tory, Cherie Blair Booth, in her street weapons commission.
	The Government's principal measure of crime is the British crime survey, yet, as the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at King's college, London, points out, the BCS fails to measure far more crime than it actually accounts for. At present, it does not include offences against those under the age of 16; murder and homicide are omitted; it does not measure rape and sexual assaults against women; and it underestimates incidences of domestic violence. Crimes against businesses are not included, nor does it measure white-collar, corporate or environmental crimes, all of which can have a devastating impact on thousands of people at the same time. As for the BCS's treatment of antisocial behaviour, the Government have sought to count what appear to be seven seemingly random measures of behaviour, leading the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies to note that
	"it is hardly surprising that anti-social behaviour means whatever the government says it means. This has undoubtedly given ministers enormous scope to target whatever problem they consider to be of interest at any given point in time. Whether such a subjective and amorphous category provides the basis for robust, informed and evidence-based policy is a very different question".
	Even when we talk about reported crime, the Government dent people's confidence by mis-classifying it. The recent revelation that the crime figures for serious violence had been understated by 13 forces fundamentally undermines the public's belief in the information that they are being given. If those most serious offences, which have such a great impact on perceptions of public safety, have been understated for as long as 10 years, it is hardly surprising that people should question what they are being told. If we cannot even count a problem, how can we combat it?
	It is telling that, according to Louise Casey, the least trusted source on national statistics on crime is the Prime Minister, closely followed by the Home Office. We welcome Ms Casey's honesty, and her backing for the Conservative proposal for public trust and confidence to be strengthened by collating crime statistics on an independent basis.
	I believe that we may need to go further and examine the potential for a single definitive measure for each crime rather than the often contradictory picture of British crime survey figures, as well as reported crime figures, which confuse the public. For some crimes, reported crime numbers may be more appropriate; for others, survey data may be more definitive. Irrespective of that, it is clear that official crime statistics should be at arm's length from the Home Office, so that the public know that the figures have not been chosen to suit the spin.
	What of direct public action to prevent crime or to arrest offenders? According to Louise Casey, 75 per cent. of the public say that they are prepared to take an active role in tackling crime, yet only four out 10 say that they would intervene to challenge antisocial behaviour—fewer than in any comparable European country, with six out of 10 people being prepared to do so in Germany.
	One barrier to such direct action is people's belief that if they get involved and challenge unacceptable behaviour by seeking to enforce their ability to conduct a citizen's arrest, they fear that they will be the ones on the receiving end. Rather than being supported by police and prosecutors, such people might end up with a criminal record. As Louise Casey stated in her report:
	"There was a strong view from members of the public during the review that they would no longer intervene if they saw a crime taking place, for fear that they would either be attacked by the perpetrators or be arrested themselves by the police."
	It is our duty to help, not hinder active citizens. That is why it is right to scrap Whitehall targets that encourage the police to pick on soft targets; why we should amend the police guidelines so that officers back those who use reasonable force to maintain the Queen's peace; and why the code for Crown prosecutors should be amended to make it clear that it is not in the public interest to prosecute those who perform a citizen's arrest in good faith. If people take appropriate action to protect their communities, they should be praised, not prosecuted.

Keith Vaz: It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Hornchurch (James Brokenshire). I served with him for more than two years on the Constitutional Affairs Select Committee. He was then very quiet and studious, intervening in a most helpful way in the surroundings of a Select Committee. He has turned into a veritable Rottweiler since joining the Front-Bench team. I do not know whether it was the influence of the hon. Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell), who is sitting on his right, that made him find his proper bearings. I am sorry that the shadow Home Secretary has just left. It used to be good cop, bad cop; we now have bad cop, bad cop: two very strong local PCs, with the divisional commander, the hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve), who has just left the Chamber, as a benign chief superintendent looking after the two PCs.
	The Opposition used to quote Rudy Giuliani as their model for dealing with crime; it is now Cherie Blair and Louise Casey. How things have changed. At least they have not quoted President-elect Obama. This must be the first debate since Tuesday in which nobody has mentioned him—so I thought I would anyway, just in case people felt that I was not being supportive of him.
	I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Mr. Coaker) on his promotion in the Home Office to the role of Minister of State; it is a very worthy promotion and he will be a superb police Minister. He is of course the son of a police officer himself. I am not sure whether he arrived at his first meeting saying, in the words of "Dixon of Dock Green", "Evening all", but we certainly have someone in the job with enormous ability and an understanding of the police force, and we are very proud of what he has done so far. We in the east midlands are extremely proud to have him as our local Minister. Anyone who can go out on Halloween with the specials in Nottingham deserves our respect and thanks.
	I am sure that we will also hear from the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Mr. Campbell), who has taken over the old job of my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling. We welcome him to his new position. I am sure that, as a former Whip, he has been preparing to be junior police Minister for the past four years or so.
	May I congratulate the Government? I feel that I must do so in order to redress what has been said by Conservative Members, even though, as Chair of the Select Committee on Home Affairs, I try not to be a Government patsy. I thank the Minister for Security, Counter-Terrorism, Crime and Policing for ensuring that one of his first acts in post was to settle the police pay dispute for this year by giving them a settlement lasting three years at 2.6 per cent. That was the best and the right thing to do in the circumstances. Like me, he and the Prime Minister, along with many right hon. and hon. Members of the House, attended the Police Dependants Trust event only yesterday, when the Prime Minister rightly paid tribute to the work of the police and the exceptional nature of their job. I am so glad that this year I will not need to spend the period before Christmas joining the police on a big march through London saying to the Government, "Please pay up on the police award."
	The Government did the right thing. We must never be in a situation where the Government and the police fall out over pay, and the Government should always abide by the decision of any independent arbitration, rather than leave officers, who have no ability to strike, to take to the streets to demonstrate. Perhaps that is all in the past, so I say to the Government, "Well done. Thank you for doing that. It is a good thing to get out of your in-tray."
	The shadow police Minister mentioned the appointment of Jan Berry. It is another case of the Government's appointments being used against them, but the Home Secretary was right to appoint her to her position. She is not quite poacher turned gamekeeper, but I hope that her vast experience will mean that she will be able to assist the Government in their difficult task. Everyone on both sides of the House agrees—I have heard this so many times in debates on crime and policing over the past two years—on the need to cut police bureaucracy. Someone said that we should have a bonfire of targets. We should do that, so I think that Jan Berry's appointment is a very good thing, and I hope that the Government will be able to listen to her sensible suggestions.
	At midnight on Monday, the Home Affairs Committee will publish its long report into policing in the 21st century. We began our inquiry in February, and it has taken a great deal of time. One member of the Committee is in his place, the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T.C. Davies), and another, the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), has just left the Chamber—he will doubtless pop back in during this debate. They will attest to the fact that the Committee took a great deal of time over the report, listening to a large number of witnesses and travelling the country—we visited Reading, Monmouth, Staffordshire and Manchester to take evidence. I hope that the House will be pleased with the report. I have to be careful that I do not inadvertently tell the House what is in it, because it has been embargoed and we must not allow leaks, even to the House itself. I hope that everyone will be waiting outside Her Majesty's Stationery Office on Monday to receive their copy at one minute past midnight.
	The hon. Member for Hornchurch takes public engagement in fighting crime literally, in his new guise as Mr. Nasty. That public engagement does not necessarily mean that the public have to fight crime themselves, although I understand the circumstances in which he and others feel it is necessary to do so. He should acknowledge the copyright of the hon. Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer), another member of the Home Affairs Committee, who originally put through this House a private Member's Bill on so-called have-a-go heroes as a result of the situation in his constituency. Of course, there are circumstances in which such an approach is necessary and important.
	More importantly, however, we need to get the public on side. Fighting crime should be above party politics; and I am surprised that after so many years it still is not. Unless we engage the public in fighting crime, we cannot fulfil the lofty ambitions of Sir Robert Peel quoted by the hon. Member for Hornchurch. I know that that sounds like centuries ago—certainly longer ago than "Dixon of Dock Green"—but core values are extremely important to tackling crime. Everyone acknowledges that the nature of crime has changed since the days of Robert Peel—for example, we have internet crime, which of course was not possible then—but those core values remain important.
	To borrow a phrase from new Labour, we need core values in a modern setting. We must make them relevant to the lives of ordinary people. That is why, on 17 November, with the help of the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) and the deputy Mayor of London, Kit Malthouse, the Select Committee will launch another inquiry into knife crime. We felt that it was important to involve all political parties, hence the involvement of the hon. Gentleman, the deputy Mayor and others—although, sadly, the leader of the Conservative Party could not attend because of diary commitments.
	It is important to reach a consensus on how to deal with issues such as knife crime, and crime in general. That is what the public want; they do not want to see us squabbling—not that we have been squabbling today; we have to put forward our different ideological views. However, on crime, the public expect us to be above party politics. Crime affects every member of the public—men, women and children—from birth to death. Everyone, at some point, will be involved in the criminal justice system, whether individually or through a family member, either as the perpetrator—of course, that does not apply to anyone in this House—or, more likely, as a victim, or as somebody who knows a victim, observes a crime or reads a newspaper. The responsibility for everyone to rise above politics is extremely important.
	I also praise Louise Casey—we are all quoting her like mad, even though she is not here—who has done a pretty good job. She has been allowed to do some "blue-sky thinking"—as it is called—on the Government's crime policy. She is right to mention the public's worry that crime is rising, although statistics tell us that it is falling—that is what the British crime survey has told us for the past 11 years. We must overcome that difference in perception, which has been identified by the Opposition and acknowledged by the Government.
	We must have faith in the organisation and the individuals fighting crime for us—the police. They need to be well paid, well resourced and well respected. Ian Johnston, the head of the Police Superintendents Association, told his conference:
	"The greatest challenge facing policing today is the issue of public confidence."
	When I intervened on the Minister, I mentioned that more than 40 per cent. of those who have had contact with the police have less confidence after their experience than before. Those are the worst figures in the public sector, which should worry the Government and chief constables. This Government have invested more money in fighting crime than any other—the Opposition will probably not accept that, but the statistics bear it out. The police are better resourced than ever before. However, when I try to intervene in cases and ring a police constable—yes, the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee actually does this—to find out what is happening, often I am told that the police officer in charge of the case is either sick, out of the office, at lunch and will ring me back. Even I—an elected representative trying to intervene in a case—have found a lack of proper communication. That is the first thing that we need to consider.

Christopher Huhne: The hon. Gentleman may not realise that I favour a change in the electoral system for the House—and I think that my electors in Eastleigh know that. If I had my way, my constituents would have the opportunity of electing a Conservative Member and a Labour Member as well as a Liberal Democrat Member in a multi-Member constituency. I believe that that would help re-engage people in our national politics, but Mr. Deputy Speaker will pull me up for making irrelevant remarks, so I will revert to the subject of the debate.
	The police in this country have an extraordinary, honourable tradition of being non-political. We have a fantastically good and successful police force. I do not want the professionalism of police services throughout the country to be tarnished by the sort of yah-boo politics, which, I fear, would ensue if we accepted what the Conservatives advocate and had one person, after election by first past the post, in which the issues would be polarised as much as possible to clarify support for one person against another. That is a recipe for polarising the debate about policing and leading to much worse police outcomes in many parts of the country. Senior police officers, who have thought about the matter, are worried about the proposal. They buy the argument about local accountability because they rightly want national targets to be abolished. It has taken some time—11 years—for Labour Members to reach that view, but, thank heavens, having exhausted all the alternatives, the Government seem to be stumbling into the right policy area.
	The method whereby we hold people to account is crucial. We need a system, which not only represents fairly all the groups in the police authorities that will act as a sounding board for the chief constable, but will, by virtue of representing all those groups, including the party groups, have to work together through co-operation and consensus rather than confrontation. That is much more likely to guarantee a continuation of the tradition that we all support—professional, non-political policing—than the proposals that Conservative Members have made or those that appear in the Government's Green Paper. Using first past the post to elect one person for each crime and disorder reduction partnership will have a similar effect to that I have outlined. On analysis of the likely outcome of the proposals in the Government Green Paper, police authorities will probably be unrepresentative.
	Let us go back to the drawing board, agree that we need a decentralised system, with real power for local people, and ensure that the system of accountability genuinely engages local people by drawing everybody in, and does not attempt to polarise and make more confrontational a debate that does not need to be confrontational.

Jeremy Wright: It has been clear throughout the debate that the proposition we are discussing is not only about public engagement in fighting crime, but, linked to it, whether public confidence is sufficient to enable them to engage in an enthusiastic manner. I want to focus on two particular aspects of the process that is followed by all those who have engaged with the police and the criminal justice system.
	Let me start with the police and with the point at which people first make contact with them, which is hugely important. First contact may be made by phone. As my hon. Friend the Member for Upminster (Angela Watkinson) mentioned earlier, it can be difficult getting through to the police by phone, and when that happens the public's perception of the police does not start on the right footing. Sometimes, too, the public do not receive a visit when they expect or as quickly as they would like. I was pleased to see that the Green Paper made reference to that in respect of the new national standards on how quickly people should be responded to.
	In order for that process to make sense, there must be a reasonable way in which to assess police priorities in terms of response times. We all understand that the police cannot be everywhere at once and cannot respond quickly to everything, so there must be a reasonable method according to which the police may determine which cases are a priority and which are not. I cannot be the only Member who has had long arguments with their local police forces about how that process is carried out.
	If the public are to have confidence in the system and remain engaged with it, they must also have confidence in how police priorities are assessed and implemented. It seems perfectly right, as the Green Paper says, that we should look at the vulnerability of the person who makes the phone call and expects the police visit when determining whether the request for such a visit should be viewed as a priority. It is also important to look in a wider sense at how we define vulnerability. Of course, in many cases, it is not a priority to respond to an incident of domestic violence or harassment, but if that violence and harassment occurs in the context of a long-running saga, repeated events or perhaps when a violent partner returns from a period in custody, it should be viewed as a priority. At first sight, such a case might not seem like a matter of high priority, but with a fuller investigation of the background facts, it most certainly can become one. Neither the Minister nor the House will need any reminder that nearly every murder case that the courts have to deal with is effectively a domestic incident that has become extremely serious.
	My second point is about accountability. As the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne) made clear, there is a measure of agreement across the House on the need for better accountability in respect of setting policing priorities.
	The right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) raised the question whether we are talking about directly elected police chief constables—and it was made clear to him that we are not. There is an important distinction between those who set strategic priorities for a police force and those who take operational decisions. I do not believe that anyone is suggesting that such operational decisions should be taken by anyone who is elected; in my view, however, strategic decisions most certainly should be.
	The point about direct election is that it is all well and good telling the public, as they have often heard on so many subjects, "Your views are very important to us; consultation is vital.", but that will not work unless there is a mechanism that not only allows the public's views to be taken into account but, if those views are roundly and widely ignored by the body concerned, allows the public to act to remedy the problem. The most obvious way of doing that is to ensure that, if someone is elected to a position to set particular policing priorities which are not to the public's liking, the public can get rid of that person. Establishing such a mechanism is vital to supporting public confidence, and public willingness to engage with the policing and criminal justice system.
	Confidence is also based on the flow of good information, not just from the public to the police—important though that is—but from the police to the public. As Louise Casey rightly points out in her report, it is important for the public to know when the information that they have given to the police has a positive effect. When they have supplied information—sometimes, as we know, at considerable risk to themselves—they need to be aware that it has resulted in a positive outcome: that arrests have been made or investigations carried out, and that that has had positive consequences.
	Confidence can exist only if information is trusted and reliable. The public must be able to believe that what they are being told is accurate and comprehensive. We need not go back too many days or weeks to see that the public's confidence in crime statistics has been severely dented, although it could be questioned whether it was ever very high in the first place. As has already been said, it is important for crime statistics to come from a trusted, independent source, so that we can all have confidence in them.
	Confidence in crime statistics is also linked to a more general confidence in the policing and criminal justice system. That is demonstrated by the vicious downward spiral that sometimes results when those who do not trust the crime statistics do not report offences because they do not believe that their reports will be acted on effectively, and then, of course, trust the statistics even less: because they know from personal experience that some crimes are not reported, they conclude that the statistics cannot possibly be an accurate and comprehensive reflection of the level of crime in their communities.
	Public confidence is not just about the way in which the police respond to crime; it is also about the way in which the criminal justice system responds to crime and those who commit it. If we are discussing public engagement in fighting crime, we must take account of ways in which the public engage with the criminal justice system as well as ways in which they engage with the police.
	Public engagement is vital in the context of the criminal justice system. The most obvious example is when members of the public serve as jurors in criminal trials. I declare an interest, as one who practised as a criminal barrister for some years in the west midlands. I saw a great number of juries during that time, and gained a huge amount of respect both for the institution and for the people who served as jurors in the criminal cases that I tried. It seems to me that the jury system is the practical and direct application of common sense in the criminal justice system.
	One would hope that all those who have served as jurors have slightly more confidence in the criminal justice system, and are slightly more reassured that it operates to defend their interests. That confidence should not be undermined by anything that we do, or by anything that the Government do. The Government talk of cases that it is not suitable for a jury to try: cases that are beyond the capacity of jurors, such as serious fraud cases. I have tried such cases with juries who have reached conclusions identical to those that the judge has said that he would have reached on each and every count.
	If we proceed down the Government's line, we cannot be surprised when the public say "In that case, you do not have as much confidence in the jury system as you say you do." The jury system is the right way in which to try criminal cases. If a jury has difficulty in understanding a case, that is probably the fault of the advocates and not the fault of the jury. It is important that we maintain our confidence in the system, so that the public can engage with it and have confidence in it themselves. Once the jury has done its job, however, and there is a conviction where appropriate, we must move on to consider sentencing, which is crucial to public confidence in the system. It is perfectly true that the public do not often believe that sentencing decisions are right, but the Minister was also correct to say that in many instances the public have not seen the whole of the case—how could they have done? Public interest in sentencing is always legitimate, but, given that they will not have heard all the evidence and mitigation, public outrage—often aided and abetted by the tabloid press—is not always appropriate. We must draw that distinction.
	Judges have a difficult job to do in every case. They have to weigh up different factors on both sides of the argument and make a sensible decision as to what appropriate sentence should result. I appreciate that the Government will not take up every recommendation in Louise Casey's report, but may I counsel the Minister against proposal 17? It refers to situations in which a judge who wishes to pass a community punishment order first asks for a pre-sentence report to assess suitability to carry out such work. Louise Casey's concern is that such a delay is very seldom necessary, and that the judge should be able to say straight away, "A community punishment order is what is necessary, so let's have one; we don't need a report." The only cautionary note I would sound on that is that pre-sentence reports are used for a variety of purposes, and it is right that judges should have all the facts available to them before they pass sentence. One of those facts may be whether it is unsuitable for the defendant to carry out community punishment because of a physical disability or illness, but pre-sentence reports also address many other considerations, and I hope the Government would do nothing to restrict the amount of information the judge has before passing an appropriate sentence.
	If the public are to have confidence in the system, it is right for them to expect the judge to take everything of relevance into account, including the views of the victim and the victim's family, but while I support that concept, there is, again, something that troubles me. That information is gathered from a victim impact statement, which allows the victim—or their family where, sadly, they are no longer available to give their views—to explain to the judge the impact the offence has had on them, the wider community, and their friends and family. Although I commend the intention, I do not believe that sentencing should be carried out on the basis of how much a particular offence has affected those who remain behind, because let us consider the most extreme cases. The family of a murder victim may well put forward a very cogent, coherent, moving, emotional response on how a murder has affected them—and they should be able to do so—but we cannot, just because the family have put forward that case, assess that murder as being more serious than a murder where there is no family, and there are no friends and no wider community who came into contact with the victim, and therefore there is no victim impact statement. While I entirely understand the necessity of the public, and the subset of the public most directly affected by a criminal offence, engaging with the process in this way, I am concerned that by doing this we will start to move away from the vital principle that what is most important is not the public's reaction to the offence, but the criminality of the offender, along with that offender's particular circumstances and the circumstances of the offence.
	The Government must also be careful about their intervention in sentencing. Yes, the public will expect the Government to set a sentencing framework, but they will have confidence in the Government's ability to help fight crime and run a sensible and responsive criminal justice system only if the Government set an adequate sentencing framework. However, there is a difference between setting a framework and appearing to intervene in individual sentencing decisions. Public confidence in the system is undermined if what appears to be happening is that the Home Secretary or the Lord Chancellor is writing to judges saying, "Because we've got a problem with prison capacity, I don't think you ought to be sending too many people to prison." That is precisely the kind of intervention that undermines public confidence in the system and leads the public to say, "I am not engaging with this at all. If the Government cannot respond to a need for prison places, when, frankly, they were told a long time ago that there was a need for them, I do not have confidence in that system". Governments, of whatever political colour, have got to be careful to set the proper sentencing framework, but not to appear to intervene in individual sentencing decisions.
	What is absolutely legitimate in the context of this debate is for the public to expect that sentencing, of whatever type, constitutes proper punishment. We have talked a little about community punishment orders. As I said in an intervention on the hon. Member for Eastleigh, it is entirely appropriate that the public should understand clearly what is done as part and parcel of a community punishment order, that they should see that it is real punishment, and that they should have some understanding of the result of it—of what has been achieved on behalf of the community receiving some form of recompense from the offender.
	I support a great deal of what is in Louise Casey's report and in the Green Paper, which is designed to achieve that effect. However, on prison sentences there are important points to be made about the balance between punishment and rehabilitation, and whether the two need to be mutually exclusive. In my view, they do not. I think it right that the first objective of a prison sentence is to protect the public; it is neither punishment nor rehabilitation. The point of a prison sentence—the first objective—is to take someone whom a judge believes to be dangerous to the public out of the public's way and put them behind bars, so that they can do no harm for the duration of their imprisonment. The second objective is certainly to punish, and to deter others from committing a similar offence, but there is also an objective of rehabilitation—of preventing that offender from leaving prison and committing further offences. That is absolutely necessary, and most people in this country would say that that is a proper objective for a prison sentence.
	What I have never understood is why it appears to some to be mutually exclusive to punish and to rehabilitate. In my view, both can be done at once. One of the best examples of this is an area in which we need to improve our prison system: the effort of educating and training those in prison with inadequate skills and qualifications, to make absolutely sure that when they come out, they have no excuse for not earning a law-abiding living. Why can we not educate and train those people better? If we do do that, let us remember that for a lot of these individuals, the one part of their life that they hated most was when they had to go to school and learn, so it will be punishment for them to have to learn, be educated and gain skills. No one should imagine that a properly run system of educating offenders is anything other than punishment, as well as rehabilitation.
	In many ways, what I have been talking about in the context of public engagement in and confidence in fighting crime—engagement with the police and with the criminal justice system—is all far too late. The best type of public engagement in fighting crime happens before either of those two stages, and well before the offender knows that he is an offender. The best type of public engagement in fighting crime is that which takes place when educating people in school, be it a parent, a teacher, a governor of a school or a local education authority. We know about the well-trodden path from truancy to crime. If people can be kept in education and engaged, they are less likely to become criminals. So if we want the public to engage in the fight against crime, we should not wait until we have to call the police. We should encourage such people in what they do in education and in the voluntary sector.
	I return to the point that I made in intervening on the Minister. If we want to fight crime effectively, we have got to allow people to work in youth clubs and to encourage them to help with young people's clubs of all kinds. The people who do such work, and are good at it, are also good at lots of other things, and their time is limited. They do not want to spend a large proportion of that time wading through paperwork; they want to spend it helping young people. What the Government can do, but have not yet done to my satisfaction or, I am sure, to theirs, is ensure that such people face no barriers to helping young people in that way.
	That means that we must cut back on the amount of paperwork. I understand that paperwork is necessary on one level—to keep our children safe—but it is becoming overly burdensome and repetitive. I do not want any more of my constituents to say to me, "I am employed at a young offenders institution and, thus, have a high level of clearance for working with young people, but I have to get a separate Criminal Records Bureau check to help the scouts on a Thursday night." Such a situation is ridiculous. It means that fewer and fewer people will come forward to do this valuable work, and, thus our efforts at fighting crime and engaging the public in fighting crime will be impeded. My final plea to the Minister is to ensure that members of the public who are keen to fight crime and engage in that process are encouraged to do so, not only when they contact the police or serve on a jury, but before that, when they help to ensure that there is not a problem in the first place.

Tony Baldry: Absolutely. Police officers and PCSOs visibly out and about together is reassuring and good news. However, it is frustrating for local communities if the sworn officer gets taken away to do other things. For a while, local residents see neighbourhood police officers, but then they disappear. That is confusing. Neighbourhood police officers should be ring-fenced for that activity and not extracted for other purposes.
	I am worried about whether local councillors and local people have sufficiently bought in to neighbourhood action groups. We have heard much about the involvement of local people in electing those who might be responsible for holding chief constables and others to account. However, we now have neighbourhood action groups, and I visited those in my constituency, as I am sure other hon. Members have done in their constituencies. They work well and bring all the statutory agencies together. However, although there were some good and dedicated volunteers and members of the local community, there were not as many as I had hoped, and not enough to make one feel that it was a genuine neighbourhood body.
	Part of the problem is that neighbourhood policing areas have to cover quite large areas, by definition. For example, one neighbourhood policing area in Banbury covers three wards of the town. The reality, however, is that councillors and local residents tend to think of neighbourhoods as much smaller areas. Indeed, the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Leicester, East said that the key was for people to be neighbours to one another. However, I am quite sure that people in Leicester do not consider their neighbourhood to be the equivalent of three wards of the city. They consider their neighbourhood to be, if I may use a parliamentary term, their local polling district equivalent or part of their housing estate at most. The neighbourhood action group areas are perhaps too large. If neighbourhood action groups are to mean more than the local representation of local statutory agencies, they will need to engage a lot more local people in their running.
	That leads me to my final point, which is about partnerships more broadly. I can see obvious strengths in partnerships. Many issues, such as alcohol and drug dependency, to which I have already referred, involve a number of different Departments and agencies. The work done by the safer community partnership in Oxfordshire, in bringing together the county council, district councils, the Thames Valley police and a number of agencies, is impressive and worth while. However, I have two concerns about partnerships. The first is a somewhat cynical, world-weary concern that Whitehall can use them as a device to blur which Department is responsible for the cost of delivering various public services. If we are not careful, the default position is for such costs to fall on local authorities. Partnerships then become a way for central Government to shift financial burdens on to local government and local taxpayers, but without any compensating mechanisms.
	I am also not sure that there is sufficient political buy-in to all partnership arrangements. In other words, I am not convinced that local councillors and local people are always fully aware of all the partnership arrangements. If I had not spent a day with the Oxford safer community partnership, I would have known little of its workings, and I suspect that the same goes for other parliamentary colleagues. My neighbour, the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris), might be more up to speed than me, but there can be a tendency for such initiatives to become officer-led. We are therefore talking about "touch on the tiller" stuff, to do with how we keep local councillors and local people briefed and involved in what is happening in such partnerships. I found my experience with the Thames Valley police very valuable, however, as it brought to my awareness certain things that I did not expect I would see.
	My last point—we still have plenty of time, although I promise my hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell) that it really will be my last point—is about hearing from the police. The Police Federation and police officers generally are quite shy about approaching Members of Parliament if they have concerns. They come and tell us about police pay, which is understandable, but they feel constrained about talking to us about operational issues, even though the police parliamentary scheme has given them licence to do that.
	Police officers talk to the Police Federation, but the only time that the Police Federation comes and talks to colleagues is to discuss pay and rations. However, there are all sorts of useful operational issues about which the Police Federation can talk to Members of Parliament. I hope that it will do so more, because policing is an incredibly important part of all our constituents' lives. Members of Parliament want it to work successfully and we are all supportive of our local police forces, but we cannot help to sort things out if we do not know when there is a problem. I therefore hope that more police officers will, through the Police Federation, come and talk to Members of Parliament about their concerns.

Simon Hughes: I wish to raise a few points about Greater London policing, particularly about the ability to engage the public in local policing, which obviously applies to my borough of Southwark and my constituency.
	We pay tribute to those who are engaged and do their jobs so well. The special constables are often mentioned; they are absolutely meritorious. We hope that many more people will become special constables. All the London boroughs have police and community consultative groups, many of which comprise members of the public who give up their time and energy to volunteer; they do a good job. There are also neighbourhood watch volunteers and many people in the voluntary sector who work in organisations that help to engage with the police. I shall return to some particular examples later, but many work with young people trying to ensure good relations between youth organisations, youth clubs and the police. Some youth workers are out on the street every evening, acting as an interface between a tense situation and the police's dealing with it.
	As I said to the hon. Member for Hornchurch (James Brokenshire) earlier, I have always taken the view that when people feel confident enough, they should be encouraged to get involved in public order incidents rather than pull back from them. Sometimes we need to be bold and we have to tell people that they should not do relatively minor things like putting their feet on the seats, breaking the rules in buses or trams or on the tube and so forth. If people see something going on that should not be, they should get involved. Many other Members have done that, as I have.
	People who are willing to act often find that the incident is thereby defused. The other night—a Sunday night—there was a great fight going on in Bermondsey, with loads of people milling around and kicking each other, girls as well as boys. Other people were doing nothing. I did not consider that acceptable. I shouted at them all and pulled them apart, and in that way it was ended. Such action is quite easy if people are willing to take it People must understand that we have a responsibility for policing our own communities alongside the police. The expectation that problems can be solved by a phone call and that the police will arrive in time is often naïve. In the case that I have described they arrived well after the event, blue lights blazing, with three or four squad cars. By that time it was all over—the incident had ended long before they arrived. People must be realistic in such circumstances.
	Let me reinforce a strong point. There is no excuse, in my book, for a police officer who takes a call from someone reporting a crime not to return to that person within 24 hours, or immediately if need be. The telephone numbers that people are given must be numbers on which someone will answer, and the same applies to e-mail addresses. It is no good saying, "Your neighbourhood team have a mobile phone," if the blessed thing is not answered, or if someone does not deal with the report that is made. The police say that they are receiving more calls. Well, we are all receiving more calls: that is life. We live in a busier world, and that is no excuse. Civilians work for the police, and the public do not mind if a civilian answers the telephone. The same applies to volunteers. If members of the public receive competent, up-to-date, timely, efficient replies, they will find that encouraging, and we need to ensure that it happens.
	The introduction of safer neighbourhood teams was proposed by many of us, but was initiated by Ken Livingstone when he was Mayor of London. It is a good system, involving a sergeant, other police officers and community wardens. Far too often, however, we still see police officers patrolling in pairs when they could be patrolling on their own. The truth is that police officers do not talk to the public nearly as often if they are with a colleague; they talk to the colleague all the time. I understand the safety issues and I am not suggesting that police officers should go into dark alleys alone at night, but we need the police to engage with the public rather than talking to each other. I hope that that cultural change will come about.
	I know that the Minister is sympathetic to my views on detached youth workers. Obviously they are not there principally to engage with the police. I believe that every borough in London—the area that I know best—would benefit hugely if the Government helped to finance the provision of enough detached youth workers for each ward, just as we now have police and community support officers in each ward. They are needed to be on the other side of the engagement, as it were—the side of young people rather than the side of the authorities. That money would be hugely well spent. The workers would not need to be statutorily employed—they would not need to be local authority youth workers. They could be employed by the voluntary sector, perhaps by the faith groups. I am convinced that they would add greatly to community safety and to public engagement on the streets of London and elsewhere.
	When I last looked at policing in New York, I saw that the New York police department took effective action in engaging local residents to be their eyes and ears. On council estates in New York city, the concierges are residents of the tower blocks. Some are people who have retired early. They have walkie-talkies to link them with the police, and they know exactly who lives in their blocks. If someone comes out with a load of furniture, six television sets and lots of electronic equipment, the concierge will be able to tell immediately that that is not what they are meant to be doing and will get on the phone to the estate-based police. As a result of the work of that fantastic combination, the level of crime fell enormously in the areas of New York that were the most deprived and difficult to police.
	I also noted that the police were very versatile. They had pedal bikes, and they were willing to abseil down the tower blocks if that was necessary. That much more flexible approach was combined with a knowledge of the local community eyes and ears: the people behind the curtains. Those people received a small amount of remuneration—some pocket money for helping out and benefiting their community.
	The hon. Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) made some good points about the complexity of all the consultation processes. I think that, along with the Mayor of London, the Minister should examine the organisational structure in London. Every borough has a police and community consultative group, which is a legacy of the Scarman inquiry. In addition, we have safer neighbourhood partnerships, and there are other links between boroughs and the police service. There are too many of them now; the same people go to all of them, and not enough people go to any of them. We need to streamline the process. In Southwark, we have eight community councils. It would be far more logical to have one overarching police and community consultative group, rather than lots of different organisations that are trying to be the link between the local authority, the police and all the other statutory voluntary agencies.
	Comparable statistics are valuable, but it often takes a long time to get the police to run systems that are easily comparable ward by ward, local authority by local authority, and police area by police area. They are useful only if they allow comparisons between one authority and another and if they go back far enough, so that we can compare last year and two years ago with the current year.
	On accountability, it would be good for the public—and we would have lots of people coming to meetings—if every quarter in every borough, the police commander, the senior judge or senior magistrate and the leader of the council or the councillor responsible for community safety came out and did a public accountability session. Often the council says it is the police's responsibility, and the police say, "Tell the courts that, not me," and the courts say, "It's the police." We need to get them all in the same place at the same time, so that they cannot pass the buck and the public can hold their elected and appointed senior people to account.
	There is a debate in London about police station closures. I have always understood the need to keep the location of station houses up to date—people cannot always say that they are in the right place—but the police have to understand that if we are to close police stations with public consent, there must be a police presence where the public are. The best way to have police engagement with the public is to put a police point, shop or centre—or whatever it is called—at the tube station, outside the supermarket, in the shopping centre or on the main route where the buses pass, because the place where people can go and tell the police something needs to be the place where they naturally go on their daily trip to or from work, school or college. If the police can organise themselves so they have a presence where the largest numbers of people are, we will not have nearly as many concerns if a police station is being closed down elsewhere.
	The Minister will know that two weeks ago a group of community organisations across the river launched, "Enough! Make Youth Violence History." It was a successful launch, and I have referred to the campaign before. We are hoping that Government will respond positively to the idea of a local organisation saying, "We believe we can make a huge impact in bringing down gun and knife crime, not by having new structures and organisations, but by bringing in volunteers—extra people—to help the existing organisations." There is a website: www.enoughlondon.com. I hope people will volunteer and encourage others to do so, because the answer to these problems lies in the public taking their civic responsibilities seriously. If they do that, and if people with time on their hands volunteer a bit more, we will get public engagement with the police, to the benefit of both, which will lead to a reduction in crime, an increase in safer neighbourhoods and the creation of the better city and country we all wish for.

Andrew Rosindell: What there has been is a failure of confidence; there has been a breakdown in confidence in certain areas. How many times have we heard people say, "We are not going to ring the police."? People ask, "What's the point of ringing the police, because they won't come?" The people to whom I speak say those things, and the Minister must have noticed the same reaction in his constituency. Only two weeks ago, a member of my family phoned the police only to get no reaction. Much concern has been expressed about this matter. The police are held in great regard, but on many occasions they have not come up with the goods that people expect. That must be addressed by the Government, and I hope that the Minister will take that on board.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Upminster (Angela Watkinson) highlighted that matter too, because she said that when people phone their local police station they often receive no answer. The hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) made the same point in respect of mobile phones. This is another example of how confidence is lost. When someone phones their local neighbourhood team and gets no response, and when someone phones their local police station and nobody comes round or even calls back, that causes a breakdown in confidence.
	I very much appreciated the comments made by the right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz), as did my hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch, because it was a compliment for him to have been described as a rottweiler. Perhaps that is exactly what we need to tackle crime in this country today. The British people are renowned for their bulldog spirit, and we need a bit of that if we are to tackle crime, violence and antisocial behaviour in this country. Perhaps we need less political correctness. The references to "Dixon of Dock Green" are relevant, because many of our constituents like the idea of a Dixon of Dock Green character—I hope that community policing is meant to be about that approach. We need more community-based policing, but we must have firmness as well as fairness—without the firmness, people believe that the police are not being effective.
	Political correctness is a poison in fighting crime—it does not help. Sadly, we have seen political correctness in the police and we have heard it from the Liberal Democrat Front Benchers today. The hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne) seemed to be more concerned about getting the balance right between one section of society and another and about introducing proportional representation for police authority elections than he was about fighting crime. That will be viewed dimly by people across the country.
	I commend the hon. Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith), who made a thoughtful speech, with many relevant points about her constituency. It is a pity that more Labour Members have not spoken—only the right hon. Member for Leicester, East and the hon. Lady have chosen to do so.